The Hunter's Remorse
by elphabathedelirious32
Summary: Ziva takes a midnight swim and considers her tangled family ties. Set just after Kill Ari, Pt. II. Rather dark. Oneshot.


After she shot her brother, there was only one thing Ziva could think of doing, and that was swimming until she couldn't move- and if that meant she drowned, she'd drown.

The hotel pool was technically closed, but a lock never stopped a David, and Ziva picked it easily, slipped in, closed the door behind her, and, having forgotten her swimsuit, stripped down to nothing and went gently into the dark water.

And then she swam, in a vortex of pale limbs and dark hair swirling in the impenetrable water; back and forth, backstroke and free stroke, until her heart was beating like a caged and angry bird against her ribs. She slowed, and moved gracefully into her favorite, invented stroke; one arm free stroke, the other into backstroke, her legs twisting into a cyclone as she scythed through the water. When she reached the other side and gripped the tile edge, breathing hard, she could have sworn she felt the lick of a hand at her ankle, heard a familiar laugh grown sinister and hard.

"Ari?" she whispered in the dark, heart thrumming like an engine. She doubted in a flash what she knew she'd seen, the dark burgundy hole in Ari's head, a mirror of the one he'd left in Kate's. She'd killed before, seen her sister dead- what was left- but then Ari had faked his death before. She shook her wet head.

"Are you going to kill me?" she asked the darkness, voice strong but trembling a little at the edges- not with the fear of death, that was an old enemy grown closer to a friend, but fear of- what? That Ari was there, or that he wasn't? That every sense she had was lying to her, or that what she'd seen was true, and Ari was gone?

She and Ari had always been well-matched in their father's "games." They weren't even a twelvemonth apart- six months, give or take, which hadn't struck Ziva as amiss until Ari himself had pointed it out to her. They were in the same grade, and most people thought they were twins, despite their different last names and that Ziva's skin tended toward the European side of the David gene pool, and Ari of course was much darker, half Arab.

Now Ziva wondered what both their mothers had suffered. She didn't for a minute think of Ari's mother as some seductress, pulling her father from his wife and- God, her mother would have been pregnant with her, their first, what kind of man was he, her father?

_The kind who puts the security of Israel above all else_, whispered the part of her that made Ari tease her, call her Daddy's girl and make her slap him, and pull them into playful puppy-wrestling tinged with the fighting skills they both had, even then. _A bastard_, the larger part of her- Ari's sister, Tali's sister, her mother's daughter, answered back. To lure an unsuspecting doctor into bed so he could raise a mole from birth, like some bloody Arnolphe, and go back home, smiling his duplicitous smile, and leave his wife pregnant with the girl he'd use as much- was he a sociopath, this man whose every word she'd hung on all her life, hungry for any scrap of attention- it was what everyone in his life did, she realized, he made himself the sun, center of their galaxies- a black hole, then- except for Ari's.

Ziva dove beneath the dark water and stayed there, invisible, eyes closed hard, until her lungs burned and her body rebelled, with good David survival instinct, and she came up gasping, searching for a footing.

"I'm sorry!" she screamed at the empty room, her voice echoing on the tile. "I should have known- but what was I supposed to do?" _You didn't give me a choice, you bastard, you're just like him. _

She wasn't sure anymore who she was talking to. She closed her eyes and the dark water was all of a sudden the bright blue of Haifa Bay, where she and her siblings had spent their summers. Bright daylight, the dry heat cooking the sand, Ari and Tali behind her- the summer she and Ari began to realize the secret pathology of their family, carefully keeping Tali in the dark- no, in the light happiness of her illusions, protecting her, as they always did. She was just thirteen, Ari fourteen, Tali eleven. It was their last summer together, before Ari went to live with his mother.

Had her father really had Ari's mother killed? Could he- could anyone- truly be so cold? _Ari could. Could you? _

"Fuck off," she whispered to herself in Hebrew, hating that her own head was now standing in for brother and father, manipulating easily.

She swam again, kicking off from the wall, letting the cool water envelop her. She was a good swimmer. Her father had taught her and Ari when they were four and five. He'd been gentle with them: Ziva, solemn-eyed with a head full of unruly curls, determined to outdo her brother; Ari, a bundle of taut energy, his limbs elongating almost before their eyes, beginning to lose their baby roundness, radiating heat, his hair falling into his eyes, bright with suppressed laughter at Ziva's exertions. Tali with water wings, daring to float a little outside the safe radius of her mother's arms, gurgling happily, always wanting to catch up to Ziva and Ari-

And now she'd beaten them to one thing, at least.

And Ari was- had been- with the people who'd killed her- Ziva forced the pain on herself with each stroke- that _blew Tali up_. They buried ashes and a finger, God _damn _it, Ari-

So now they'd bury him. As he had buried his mother, as her parents, her father, had buried her sister.

Was that what it was? Revenge? And who'd avenge him? Oh, she'd no doubt someone would try, and probably one day succeed, whether they knew she'd killed him or not, whether they knew what she was to him or not. And then wouldn't her father be pleased, three kids in the ground, the damn blood-soaked ground- at this rate it'd be empty, and if anything was ever solved there'd be no one left to inhabit it. Ziva punched the wall of the pool and felt it bite into her skin, and knew she'd bleed when she got out of the water. She hit the water with her stinging hand, let it splash, and then she swam to the edge of the pool and pulled herself out and slipped her clothes back on. They'd dry overnight.

And tomorrow she would fly to Tel Aviv, her brother's body in the hold, and she would let them sit shiva, let them mourn, be glad she couldn't see her own tearless face, her eyes growing harder by the minute, and she wouldn't tell them what she knew.

She would wait for her bullet. Davids were patient. She was a good hunter, but there were better. It would come.


End file.
